The Philadelphia archdiocese has had a bad time of it, lately. A number of its priests, including one diocesan official, have been accused by a grand jury of abusing children in their care — and in the case of the official, of covering up for them. Yesterday the archdiocese announced it had suspended some of them, as reported by the New York Times (WebCite cached article):

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced Tuesday that it had suspended 21 priests from active ministry in connection with accusations that involved sexual abuse or otherwise inappropriate behavior with minors.

The mass suspension was the single-most sweeping in the history of the sexual-abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, said Terence McKiernan, president of BishopAccountability.org, which archives documents from the abuse scandal in dioceses across the country.

Wow. Sounds like drastic and definite action, doesn’t it? But really, it’s not. The grand jury report, as the Times explains, was issued about a month ago:

The archdiocese’s action follows a damning grand jury report issued Feb. 10 that accused the archdiocese of a widespread cover-up of predatory priests, stretching over decades, and said that as many as 37 priests remained active in the ministry despite credible accusations against them.

And note, only 21 of the 37 were suspended. It took the archdiocese an entire month to figure out that it should suspend some — but not all! — of the 37. My guess is that almost any other employer, whether a private entity or a government agency, would have immediately suspended anyone on their payrolls who’d been cited by a grand jury of child abuse or obstruction of justice. But clearly, the Roman Catholic Church is not just any other employer … they have rigorous standards to uphold. Apparently. I’m not sure what those standards are … but they must have them. Right?

How many more examples of Mafia-like behavior does one need, in order to understand what a stinking, festering cesspool of criminality and depravity the Catholic Church is?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 9th, 2011 at 7:00 pm and is filed under Christianity, General, Metaphysics, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

[…] deflect the world’s attention from the fact that the Church he rules is a remorseless, Mafia-like cabal of criminals and criminal-enablers. CBS News reports that he used a question from a Japanese child […]

[…] I’ve already blogged about the slow response of the Philadelphia archdiocese to a grand jury report covering cases of abuse by its clergy. It took an entire month for them to finally get around to suspending some — but not all — those accused in the report of abusing children. This is staggering, since most companies or government agencies will usually suspend employees accused of crimes almost immediately, as a protective measure. […]